Introducing Lunar Method, an ethical luxury brand creating durable, luxury travel accessories for women. They create handmade accessories for travelers by combining vegan cactus leather and hand-woven fabrics from artisan women in Mexico. Beyond travel accessories, Lunar Method tells a story, with hand-sewn designs on beautiful fabrics, sourced directly from Mexican women artisans, one hundred percent natural dye-free cotton, and cruelty-free cactus leather, they advocate two important issues: women’s rights and environmental advocacy.
Unlike conventional leather, vegan cactus leather is good for the environment, free of harmful plastic byproducts, and of course, one-hundred percent cruelty-free. If that doesn’t convince you, here are three more reasons to ditch animal hide, and make the switch to vegan cactus leather.
Like leather, but better– What comes to mind when you hear the words cactus and leather in the same phase? Obviously, the term ‘leather’ is meant to give an idea of the texture, but rather the cactus is turned into a buttery soft bio-material that has a similar look and feel to animal hide. We use the incredible producer, Desserto®. They’ve created a highly sustainable plant based material as an alternative to leather made from cactus. Desserto’s material is distinguished by its flexibility and softness, while offering a great performance for a wide variety of applications and complying with the most rigorous quality and environmental standards. Unlike traditional leather that may crack or dry when wet, their line of cactus leathers varies from thin to a thicker water resistant sports’ performance level material for any of our manufacturing needs. Allowing you more flexibility, durability and breathability with a buttery soft “leather” feel.
An environmental hero– Simply put, cactus leather is better for the environment. “Cactus is a natural carbon sink, it has a great CO2 sequestering capacity. From our 14 acres, we are able to absorb 8,100 tons of CO2/year while at the farm we only generate 15.30 tons of CO2 annually.” Not only are the cactus farmers carbon neutral, but there is no need for animal stock or tanneries. In fact, cow-derived leather has almost triple the immediate negative environmental impact as its plastic synthetic counterparts, including polyurethane (PU) leather.
Leather is NOT ‘natural’– Did you know that almost all commercial leather is put through a chemical process called tanning? For example, chromium-tanned leather is the most popular form of producing leather in recent years, and one of the most toxic. It relies on a toxic slush of Chromium salts and tanning liquor. To give you an example of how toxic tanneries are, “Kanpur, India – the self proclaimed ‘Leather City of the World’ once housed more than 10,000 tanneries which, in 2003, were dumping more than 22 tons of effluence into the Ganges river everyday. The city acted in 2009, sealing 49 of the highest-polluting tanneries in town – out of a list of 404 heavy polluters.” Much of the toxic waste of these tanneries end up polluting various ocean waterways. Contrary to popular belief, once leather is “tanned” it can no longer be composted, recycled, or become biodegradable.
Please help us continue our ethical work in creting and and bringing these vegan cactus leather products to life by supporting our kickstarter and purchasing your very own vegan cactus leather LUNAR BAG.
Image Source: https://lunarmethod.com (with permission)
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